She did not confirm the existence of the prisons, saying "we cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement and military operations." She added that "some governments choose to cooperate with the U.S." in intelligence and law enforcement matters" and that that cooperation is a "two-way street."

The U.S., she said, has shared intelligence that has "stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives, in Europe as well as in the U.S. and other countries."

Rice broadly defended the practice known as rendition, in which terror suspects are whisked away from countries without formal extradition. She said rendition was recognized by international law and has been used by many countries even before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Rice asserted that the U.S. does not transport terrorism suspects "for the purpose of interrogation using torture" and "will not transport anyone to a country when we believe he will be tortured."
Then why take him there? Why use these secret camps? Because they're "terrorists" like Carlos the Jackal and Ramzi Youssef. (Good style points there: Name two notorious terrorists to justify the secret interrogation of thousands of people. All these "suspects" are guilty of being suspects, so who needs due process?)

Any violation of detention standards is investigated and punished, she said, citing the case of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison that "sickened us all" and the abuse of detainee by an intelligence agency contractor in Afghanistan.If that's a plea for credulity, it's a pretty weak attempt, considering that no officers, let alone policy makers, have been charged in any of these outrages.

After weeks of being pummeled in the European media over reports about clandestine prisoner transfers and secret detention centers, administration officials have concluded that they need to put European governments on notice that they should back off and begin to emphasize the benefits of intelligence cooperation to their citizens.Because it's so inconvenient when people actually demand accountability from the Bush Administration.

Rice pays lip service to the Constitution:

The United States is a country of laws. My colleagues and I have sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We believe in the rule of law....Hence the radical right's efforts to "reshape" the Supreme Court.

A hot topic on Daily Kos today is the fact that Bob Parsons of GoDaddy (the site registration company that had the bimbo ads running during the last Super Bowl) has posted a vehement rant in support of torture and imprisonment without charges at Guantanamo Bay. After buying into the notion that somehow the War on Iraq had any relation to terrorism at all, he asserts:

Closing Gitmo would be a huge mistake.
It doesnâ€™t take a lot of thought to realize that it would be a huge mistake if we closed Gitmo â€“ most certainly if we did it just to be politically correct with our sworn enemies. I, for one, support what our military has done and is doing there. We canâ€™t lose sight of the fact that we are indeed at war with very vicious people. We need to do whatever it takes (within reason of course, because thatâ€™s the American way) to win this war.

I think he is sorely mistaken about what "the American way" really is. To me the American way is the high road. Historically we've (usually) been the country that has stuck to its moral values and principles in the most dire of circumstances. In World War 2, we defeated the Nazis and the Japanese Emperor without resorting to the concentration camps the Nazis used or the forced labor and torture the Japanese used. We treated our enemies better than they treated us because how we treated them was about who we are, not who they were or what they did.

As a result, they are now two of our staunchest allies and favored trading partners. They completely bought into our world view because we led the way and made it easy for them to follow.

I don't think anyone could claim that Bush and company are leading anywhere that anyone would want to follow.

Another Parsons lowlight:

Interrogation techniques in the Middle East are incredibly brutal.
In the Middle East, itâ€™s not uncommon to use murder, rape, extreme physical torture (like running a drill through a prisonerâ€™s head), electrical shocks to the genitalia, pulling out fingernails, dripping acid on victims, or burning victims with a hot iron or blow torch. Yes, itâ€™s a brutal crowd that weâ€™re at war with over there.

Among the most infamous torture devices in the Middle East is a Syrian inventionâ€”they call it Al-Abd Al-Aswad--The Black Slave. The victim is strapped to a chair with a hole in the center. A red hot poker then rises from the hole and goes into the victimâ€™s rectum. It goes in and out and can go as deep as the intestines. I suspect that Syrian interrogators find out rather quickly whatever it is they want to learn.

In other words, our standards of moral behavior should be lowered to the level of everyone else. He sees American values and morality as a weakness, and to be strong like the terrorists we should take on their practices and embrace their morals. Why do so many wingnuts hate and fear American values so much? To listen to these folks, our shining moments in history were when we as a nation were the most depraved. I'm sure Parsons would have nothing but praise for the genocide against the Native Americans -- it was decisive, without any questions of due process or human dignity mucking up the process.

His praise of Syria is especially interesting. I wonder at the last sentence. Are his suspicions proof? No, but these are the days where those in power only need suspicion in order to take away anyone's human rights.

From what I've heard from the interrogation "experts" from the CIA, FBI and military who've appeared on various programs and in various articles, torture doesn't yield valuable information, because people will tell you whatever you want to hear, not necessarily what's informative or true. I'm more inclined to believe people who've done it than self-appointed experts like Parsons whose familiarity with torture probably started with seeing Reservoir Dogs at the multiplex.

Anyway, it's quite an astounding piece of unreasoning justification for bloodthirstiness and warmongering -- especially for the CEO of a major internet company. It's especially astonishing that he feels the need to promote this knee-jerk right-wing appeal for fascism on the front page of GoDaddy. He can say what he wants. This is America, after all. But it's interesting that someone would want to tie their business so closely to their personal political views.

The response on Daily Kos has been loud and clear: people are cancelling accounts with GoDaddy and moving their domain registrations elsewhere. That's also a tried and true American tradition. You do business with whom you want.

Me, I had stopped using GoDaddy when they refused to honor an advertised discount on a transaction I made with them. It was a matter of 4 bucks, but their response told me that they really didn't give a damn about me, the customer. So I went elsewhere. Such is life in a free market.

[UPDATE 10:15 EDT: Apparently he's modified his original post to remove some of the more incindiary and idiotic assertions. I did not make a copy, so I have no way of knowing, but it's apparently been noticed by a few people.]

[UPDATE 2 10:25 EDT: It seems that Mr. Parsons has put up a new post that retracts some of his prior assertions. I have to give him credit for being open to the observation that torture does not yield results. He's still digging in his heels as to whether what US personnel have been doing actually constitutes torture, but at least he's listened to some reason, which is more than we can say about many of the wingnutty butterbrains out there. Isn't it amazing how low our expectations are that it's almost a delight when those of the hate-o-sphere actually use a little reason! Thanks to tunesmith at DKos for posting this.]

If you find that you have linked to a story that was untrue, make a note of it and link to a more accurate report. If one of your own statements proves to be inaccurate, note your misstatement and the truth. Ideally, these corrections would appear in the most current version of your weblog and as an added note to the original entry. (Remember that search engines will pull up entries without regard to when they were posted; once an entry exists in your archives, it may continue to spread an untruth even if you corrected the information a few days later.) If you aren't willing to add a correction to previous entries, at least note it in a later post....

4. Post deliberately. If you invest each entry with intent, you will ensure your personal and professional integrity.

Changing or deleting entries destroys the integrity of the network. The Web is designed to be connected; indeed, the weblog permalink is an invitation for others to link. Anyone who comments on or cites a document on the Web relies on that document (or entry) to remain unchanged. A prominent addendum is the preferred way to correct any information anywhere on the Web. If an addendum is impractical, as in the case of an essay that contains numerous inaccuracies, changes must be noted with the date and a brief description of the nature of the change.

Recently a friend who is lawyer with the federal government was is a state of shock. It wasn't just because the United States government had said that torture was a permissible instrument of state policy -- it was that the fellow lawyers were not at all outraged and used the excuse, "we have to deal with terrorism."

My friend said, "but that's now how it works." The law is there to protect against these things, not aid and abet.

Then I thought of the famous film lines at the end of Judgment at Nuremberg:

Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. YOU must believe it, YOU MUST believe it.

Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.